A few years back, I misplaced something. Instead of thinking, “Where did I last see it?” I unconsciously thought, “I’ll just run a Spotlight search for it” ...as if every item in my house (and presumably the rest of my life) was indexed in Mac OS X.

That was the moment I realized using computers had literally changed the way I think.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged here, but I’ve had a lot going on. I took a new ministry role requiring me to move from the East Coast to the West Coast; I’ve been serving as ‘solo pastor’ in my new role while the Lead Pastor is on sabbatical; and I finally graduated from seminary. So, yeah, I’ve been a little busy. But, I’m taking part of my precious day-off/sabbath to write a brief post on emotions, intelligence, and the vulnerability of God because these themes have come up in so much of my spiritual formation lately. I thought it would be beneficial to document some of my processing on these subjects.

Last week I finished Part One of a new seminar called "Starting Points,"

"Christian faith does not require a person to check their brain at the door. No, Christian faith is strongest when one’s head and one’s heart are in agreement. We may not find all the answers for which we search, but there are some critical starting points in our quest."

I recently joined the pastoral staff of New City Church of Los Angeles, and one of my responsibilities is teaching a seminar on three of the most important questions about Christian faith: 1) Who is Jesus? 2) Why did he die? and 3) How can I trust the Bible?

One of the best things about being a blogger is reviewing books. And if enough people visit your blog, authors and publishers will send you books to review! This is particularly great when the books that I'm sent are books I'm excited to read. The next crop of books I'm reading to review might be my best yet. So here are 10 books I'm reading (or have already read) to review in 2015:

Last month, I traveled to San Diego, CA for the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. More specifically, I attended the SBL/AAR annual conference to present a response paper in the second session of the Open and Relational Theologies group, which was commemorating 20 years since the publishing of The Openness of God by Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Richard Rice, William Hasker, and David Basinger. Three of the original authors of the book (John Sanders, Richard Rice, and David Basinger) were there in attendance and presented reflections on the last 20 years.

Why commemorate The Openness of God (OOG) 1? Because that book signaled a theological shift in U.S. American, evangelicalical theology that has very few parallels. It was a bold vision that made claims about God that were shocking to the evangelical theological establishment then and still shock many evangelicals today.

Part 1 of "Fighting the Virus of Classical Theism," will focus on the claims made by Richard Rice in the first chapter of OOG about God's emotional sensitivity and capacity for emotional change. These claims continue to be controversial even now.

I’ve entitled my response “Open Theism and the Millennial in the Pew: Evangelical Theology and Marketing in the Age of the World Wide Web”. However, if you’ve paid any attention to religion blogs in the last two or three years, you might want to ask if there are in fact any evangelical Millennials left in the proverbial pew. Well, I assure you: ‘the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated.’ It may be true that Millennials aren’t the most enthusiastic generation when it comes to local church membership. But, due to the ubiquity of the Internet (and our vigorous use of it), it’s quite possible that evangelical Millennials are more theologically astute and active than any previous generation. I should say, too, that I do not intend to speak for all evangelical Millennials across the globe. I’m sure there are sociological considerations in South America, Africa, and Asia of which I’m unaware. So, consider my remarks indicative of a Western perspective in so far as Western evangelicalism differs from evangelicalism globally.

Recently, I’ve been reading this fantastically comprehensive treatment of divine impassibility by African theologian Amuluche Gregory Nnamani called The Paradox of a Suffering God. The first section of the book is simply historical analysis of apatheia (the Hellenistic axiom of divine impassibility) from ancient to present times. Nnamani covers everything from Greek philosophy, where the concept originates, to how the axiom mutates by the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Considering how adamantly some folks have argued that kenoticism is at odds with Chalcedonian “orthodoxy”, imagine my surprise when I learned that a Russian Orthodox theologian made a significant contribution to modern passibilism.

His name is Fr. Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (Серге́й Никола́евич Булга́ков) and he lived from 1871 to 1944. According to Nnamani,

When the Cure is Worse than the Disease

It might seem crazy to say that cancer is a “gift from God,” but John Piper has gone on record saying precisely that.[1] In a 2006 article published to the website of Desiring God Ministries (Piper’s personal ministry), he wrote about cancer on the “eve of prostate surgery” after having been diagnosed with cancer himself. Piper writes:

“1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).”

Piper is confident that cancer is “designed by God” because: a) God “foresees molecular developments becoming cancer”; and b) doesn’t “stop it.” That settles it for Piper. God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge of all that will take place in the future, and God is all-powerful. Therefore, if cancer befalls anyone, it is because God wills it.[2]

I. Turning from Idols to the True and Living God (I Thes. 1.9b)

People are not their positions. Positions are ideological affirmations a person holds at a given time, but which a person can also renounce or just grow out of. If you have been journeying on a theological pilgrimage for any significant amount of time, your positions have no doubt evolved. If they haven't, I would question how critically you've examined those beliefs, and whether you've interacted with the best alternative views.